Footballing thoughts of a Nigerian Gooner

In the beginning, God created man and football. Football was without form and was played barefooted. And God gave man the intelligence to make football fun and men began to wear boots to play football. The boots had laces and were off various shades, undergoing numerous transformations from steel-toed-steel-studded to modern day simpler boots.

The drive to go one step further and make the game one step classier and superb drove our dear Mesut Ozil to approach Adidas for Change

“I revealed to Adidas in 2014 that in the changing room I knot the laces over and over again and then tuck in the ends, that way they do not interfere with my touch”

‘I think that if you tie your laces in the traditional way it’s harder to control the ball as the surface area is not flat.

The midfield maestro has provided 16 assists this season and is expected to launch his lace-less boots on Sunday against Chelsea. The German believes his strongest attributes will be enhanced by the Adidas Ace 16+ Purecontrol.

‘I’ve tried my whole career to minimize the impact of laces on my game. To have a lace-less boot is a dream come true.’ ‘I cannot wait to wear them on the pitch.’

Yesterday on twitter, it was all about Theo Walcott’s 10 years stay with Arsenal. It was an anniversary to the day he joined the Gunners as a baby and have grown to be a man and a father. The England international scored his first club goal against Chelsea in the League Cup final of 2007 with Petr Cech in goal for the Blues. He has gone on to score many great goals for the Gunners – hat-trick against Newcastle, goals against Chelsea, Champions assist against AC Milan and Liverpool.

No player have scored more hat-tricks at the Emirates stadium than Theo Walcott.

Walcott is the first Arsenal player since after Dennis Bergkamp to score in 10 successive season. More stats can be found here.

His career has been hampered by numerous injuries and it seems he is yet to fulfill his potentials with Arsenal. His pace is electrifying but with age catching up, he has but a short time to be a Legend. 10 years with the Gunners, he surely has a testimonial loading just like my best Gunner – Tomas Rosicky – at the end of the season. Hopefully Arsenal will bombard the twitter-o-sphere with #10YearsofTomas in May. Will there have been #10YearsofNicklas if Bendtner was still with the club?

There were actions on the pitch across the globe. Liverpool and Tottenham made it to the next round of the FA Cup. But the real buzz is in Rwanda where 16 African Nations are slugging it out in the 2016 African Nations Championships strictly for home based players.

Nigeria opened her account on Monday with a 4-1 victory of Niger. The Super Eagles were denied of a chance to play in the 2011 edition by Niger but unleashed their revenge via Chisom Chikatara’s hat-trick and Osas Okoro’s opener. Enyimba’s Chikatara becomes the first Nigerian to score a hat-trick in the tournament and the 2nd player in the tournament’s history. Nigeria will play Tunisia next tomorrow.

At home, the NPFL Super 4 is on in Kaduna to prepare Nigeria’s four representatives in the continent. Warri Wolves pipped Akwa United 1-0 while Enyimba played out a 1-1 draw with Nasarawa United. There will be another set of matches tomorrow. Enyimba are current Nigerian champions and will represent the country in the CAF Champions League with Warri Wolves. Akwa United are the cup champions and will play in the CAF Confederation cup with Nasarawa United.

In other musings, Daniel Amokachi will coach a 2nd division Finnish side JS Hercules for a year. He was coach of IfeanyiUbah FC for a brief period after he was in charge of the Super Eagles for a couple of games. In other news, IfeanyiUbah FC will have 8 Brazilians – 6 players and 2 assistant coaches – in their team for the 2016 league campaign. Will they win the league? This tea is sweet.

So much football. Time to shop for my lace-lass boots.

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Published by AmosCP

A Football lover with a unique view to life. Supports Arsenal, Enyimba and the Nigerian League. A fan of Tomas Rosicky and Roger Federer with the latter as a role model. An engineer with a love for football statistics. Loves to blog about anything. Follow on twitter (www.twitter.com/AmosCP) and blog (www.twitter.com/Soccergunz).
View all posts by AmosCP